"The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution." Paul Cezanne

Allergies, our kids, our food

October 26, 2007

A famous French political thinker once said that the public would rather believe a simple lie than a complex truth.

The truth behind genetic engineering is extremely complex. It has been used for decades, but it is only in the last ten years that neurotoxins have been engineered into our food supply. No one has studied the long term health implications of children consuming foods containing neurotoxins, novel proteins and allergens.

Though to look back over the last ten years, you quickly remember that ten years ago, we didn’t have to worry about sending a peanut butter and jelly sandwich into school with our children; we didn’t have to medicate our eight year olds to get them through the school day; and the movie, Rain Man, was all we knew of autism.

Today, at least 1 out of every 17 children under the age of three has a food allergy with at least 5 million American children suffering from this condition (though these statistics are from 2002, over five years old).

Autism, diabetes and obesity are often referred to as American epidemics. So what has changed?

In 1996, the United States adopted widespread use of genetically modified crops due to growing public concern over the health risks associated with the industrial spraying of insecticidal and pesiticidal toxins. In an effort to reduce the spraying of these toxins, scientists began using biotechnology to engineer these pesticides and insecticides into the plants themselves.

As these ingredients were introduced around the world ten years ago, government agencies in Europe, Asia, Australia, Japan, Russia and 45 developed countries required them to be listed on food labels, so that consumers could make informed choices when it came to feeding their families.

In the United States, our regulatory agencies do not require these genetically engineered ingredients to be labeled. So, unlike other developed countries, we have not been informed that almost 70% of our corn, 90% of our soy and 75% of our processed food now contain neurotoxins, novel proteins and allergens.

Today one out of every three children suffers from allergies, asthma, autism or ADHD. It appears that we have unknowingly and without informed consent engaged our children in one of the largest human trials in history.

Ten years into this human trial, our children are trying to tell us something. Shouldn’t we listen?